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A review by rzarate9696
The Deep by Nick Cutter
3.0
Nick Cutter's "The Deep" felt to me like an amalgamation of Paul W.S. Anderson's "Event Horizon", Stephen King's "It", with OrangeSoda's "Russian Sleep Experiment" sensibilities. Cutter's attempts at inducing fear in this novel are a mixed bag for me. I was completely enthralled by the scenes where claustrophobia, thalassophobia, and nyctophobia are all played upon; "The Deep" is at its best when Luke gets stuck while crawling through a small pitch-black tunnel and starts to panic.
Unfortunately, besides the viewing of Westlake's scarred corpse, the descent to the Trieste, and Luke getting caught in the tunnel, this book does not do it for me horror-wise. Cutter leans heavily on the fear of millipedes, bees, obese domineering mothers, and other childhood fears that are very akin to Stephen King's "It". Luke's internal dialogue with the darkness fiddling around in his subconscious is also very corny to me in the same way King can get corny. I'm having a hard time describing it, but it's a sort of Boomer Generation-esque Americana vibe, with references to old nursery rhymes and horror fiction tropes that feel outdated or dusty at this point.
The biggest disappointment is the denouement, where Luke comes face to face with the source of the dreaded "ambrosia". The darkness, it turns out, is comically sentient, and has been meddling in human affairs for millennia in order to lead humanity's best minds to pursue scientific endeavors at the bottom of the ocean in order to set the darkness loose on the surface world. It's the dorkiest ending to a pretty decent setup, and I feel like there were so many other directions Cutter could have taken the book.
Overall it's decent, and at least the first half of the book is worth an audiobook listen.
Unfortunately, besides the viewing of Westlake's scarred corpse, the descent to the Trieste, and Luke getting caught in the tunnel, this book does not do it for me horror-wise. Cutter leans heavily on the fear of millipedes, bees, obese domineering mothers, and other childhood fears that are very akin to Stephen King's "It". Luke's internal dialogue with the darkness fiddling around in his subconscious is also very corny to me in the same way King can get corny. I'm having a hard time describing it, but it's a sort of Boomer Generation-esque Americana vibe, with references to old nursery rhymes and horror fiction tropes that feel outdated or dusty at this point.
The biggest disappointment is the denouement, where Luke comes face to face with the source of the dreaded "ambrosia". The darkness, it turns out, is comically sentient, and has been meddling in human affairs for millennia in order to lead humanity's best minds to pursue scientific endeavors at the bottom of the ocean in order to set the darkness loose on the surface world. It's the dorkiest ending to a pretty decent setup, and I feel like there were so many other directions Cutter could have taken the book.
Overall it's decent, and at least the first half of the book is worth an audiobook listen.